TOPEKA (KSNT) – Topeka residents hoping to reach their favorite travel destinations without having to drive to Kansas City to catch a flight will have to wait a little longer.
Eric Johnson, president and director of airports at the Metropolitan Topeka Airport Authority, said that plans to bring commercial flights to the Capital City are currently on hold. This comes after months of anticipation and waiting for the first chartered flights out of Topeka to be announced by the airport.
“Unfortunately, it looks like it is indefinitely delayed,” Johnson said.
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The MTAA revealed plans to bring commercial, point-to-point, flights back to Topeka in March last year. The idea behind this initiative is to give local residents the ability to fly out of Topeka Regional Airport to popular travel destinations such as Orlando, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Tampa.
Johnson said the plan to bring point-to-point flights to Topeka came after MTAA staff conversed with an airline during a conference that prompted further discussions on the idea of commercial flights being revived in the Capital City. The airline, which Johnson said he can’t name as of yet, visited Topeka Regional Airport in the spring of 2025 to asses the plan and signed a letter of intent.
The MTAA and the airline moved further along with the proposal, with the airport entering the process of getting security approval from the Transportation Security Administration. However, Johnson said plans hit a snag after the MTAA signed a minimum revenue guarantee (MSG) with the airline.
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An MSG is a type of incentive that guarantees an airline that it will generate a specified amount of cash from ticket sales associated with its new service, according to the Airport Cooperative Research Program. If an airline fails to meet the specified amount of revenue, the airport providing the guarantee makes a cash payment to the airline to make up for the shortfall. MSG agreements help airlines to limit the amount of risk they take on when providing new services.
“We kept going through the process, we were working with TSA to get the security program approved, negotiating with the airline for minimum revenue guarantee,” Johnson said.
Johnson said the MSG agreement is necessary for unproven markets such as Topeka where the last air service, provided by United Airlines, ended commercial flights in the city around a decade ago. He said the MTAA completed the MSG form and sent it off for approval from the airline, but has yet to receive a response.
“We signed it [the MSG] and sent it off for their signature,” Johnson said. “That’s when everything went quiet.”
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Johnson indicated that talks are on pause between the airline and Topeka Regional Airport as the airline identified a better opportunity for expansion elsewhere in an already established airport. He said that Topeka Regional Airport was one of a handful of other small airports that were hoping to secure similar deals with the same airline.
“We were right on the brink of bringing that service in,” Johnson said.
Johnson said the process is frustrating, especially to have been so close to bringing commercial flights back to the Capital City. However, he said that, despite the plans being “up in the air,” the MTAA isn’t giving up on bringing commercial flights back to Topeka.
“What we’re trying to do is match up the right airline, right service in the right hub,” Johnson said.
Some benefits the MTAA hopes to bring to local residents through the revival of Topeka Regional Airport include not having to drive for an hour or more to reach the Kansas City International Airport and avoid having to use toll roads. Johnson said that around 1,350 locals in and around Topeka travel on a daily basis to the Kansas City area for air travel. He hopes that, in the near future, locals won’t have to drive to a different city in a different state just to get the air services they require.
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